Thermoforming ceramic

Thermoformed chassis and body panels are featured on the car. The products were made initially in the USA for assembly in China. The car will weigh less than 2000 lb (900 kg). Automotive Design Composites, Inc of San Antonio, TX, designed the vehicle to have body panels and trunk formed from coextruded sheet of ABS with an ASA cap layer that will hang on a pultruded composite frame. Ceramic tooling is used to thermoform plastic products. 

Batch injection molding machine thermoplastics commodity resins, polyolefins (LDPE, HDPE, PP), styrenics (PS, PMMA. polycarbonates, ABS, PET), and engineered resins for higher impact strength. Continuous extruder thermoplastics. Casting PP fine film 10 to 50 pm cast film 100 to 400 pm thermoformable sheet 200 to 2500 pm. Film blow LDPE, HDPE, PP. Pug mill clay materials for bricks, tiles, and ceramics. 

In the thermoforming process, the temperature of the ceramic or metal radiant heaters is typically 400 °C (673 K). These can be treated as black bodies at an absolute temperature T, for which the radiation heat flux from an area A is... 

Radiant heaters are nonconductive sources that work exceptionally well in plastic thermoforming and bending and welding applications by replasticizing the polymer before the final production processes. The more conamonly accepted industry styles of radiant heaters are ceramic infrared units. Quartz-faced and black body... 

---